Augmented reality (AR) is a term used to define a principle of adding new virtual objects to real scene (e.g., captured by a camera) such that both may be seen on the display. For example, a video feed of a room, including a human, may have a cartoon character rendered in the feed such that it appears that the character is standing next to the human. In an example, the rendering may make it appear, to one viewing the feed, that the human is interacting with the character.
Head worn displays are the devices worn on the head of a user with a display element that the user may see. Head worn displays may look like eye glasses, helmets, etc. Often, the display element is transparent when not in use, such that a user “sees through” the display to the real world but may also observe elements rendered to the display element. Often, head worn displays are combination of sensor set and transparent or non-transparent displays that make possible to “draw” onto the real scene as perceived by the user.
Although AR is not the only application for head worn display, it is an important application for these display. To support this application, some vendors offer System-on-chip (SoC) platforms for AR on head worn displays. Traditionally SoC and hardware manufacturers that develop head worn displays often reuse existing technology components. In the case of video rendering for AR, GPU generally perform video composition immediately (within the pipeline) after rendering. The same is generally true for audio processing.